


There's a Line in the Sand (and you keeping washing it away)

by olivemartini



Series: All The Lovely Ones Have Scars [11]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), infinity war - Fandom
Genre: Angst, F/M, Pre-Iron Man, Pre-Relationship, Tony's being mean and he doesn't even know it, insecure Pepper
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-26 20:58:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14410437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/olivemartini/pseuds/olivemartini
Summary: Pepper doesn't know when it started to bother her when Tony brought home his endless string of conquests, leaving her to guard his papers and watch across the room as he talks to a girl ten times pretty than her who only wants his money, but it does.





	There's a Line in the Sand (and you keeping washing it away)

Pepper tells herself that it doesn't matter, that it doesn't bother her, that it has no bearing on her happiness whatsoever who Tony brings home for the night, but its a lie.  

It's one thing to know that he comes home at least three times a week with a different woman on his arm and quite another to see it in affect.  Pepper thinks it would be okay if she was like the rest of the world, the people who glanced over at the magazine rack while buying groceries and saw him smiling at the camera with another celebrity or reporter or intern hanging off his arm, because then she would be able to tell herself that it wasn't really true, but Pepper doesn't get to be that kind of person.  Instead, she gets to be the girl who sees it all happen, even from the beginning, when she sits in the back of a car and watches Tony lean through the divider to swat at Happy's arm, each of them rating the girls on a scale from one to ten as they walk past their tinted windows, like that's all they need to know about them.

"What about that one, sir?"  Happy gives a low whistle, and Pepper doesn't look up, just leans her head against the window and closes her eyes, makes herself count to ten.  It doesn't matter what she does- inevitably, her first errand the next morning will be to ease this new girl out of Tony's house, and depending on how Tony is feeling, she might spend the next week ordering flowers and planning dates until the interest tapers off and the cycle repeats itself.

"Nah."  Tony's sprawled across the seat, his legs and arms in Pepper's space, and she can't figure out if he genuinely wants to take up that much room or if he was just trying to annoy her.  "Redheads aren't my thing."

 _Of course they aren't,_ Pepper thinks.  She still doesn't look up from her phone, because that felt too much like admitting something where there should be nothing to say.  These aren't conversations that she has any right to care about.   _He_ is not hers to care about.   _You bastard._

 

 

The worst part about being in love with your boss is that every time you think you've found the worst part, you discover that you were wrong and that this, this moment in time right here, is officially the worst part.

Pepper's had a lot of those moments.  Before, when the sight of him with another woman would make her stomach twist and make her pick at her lunch because she isn't hungry, she thought that the worst part would just be watching him choose, them over her, night after night after night.  But that was before she had time to really think about it.

Now, she's had lots of time to think and she's decided that the worst part isn't one moment, its a bunch of little moments throughout the course of the day that make her feel like she's being punched in the stomach over and over again, until she's almost at the point where she's willing to beg impropriety just to get them to stop.  

Like when he finds a girl that he likes, and Pepper has to spend a week making reservations and buying stuffed animals and helping him decide what to wear, and when it was time for him to leave for his date he would hold his arms out and spin in a circle so she could see him from every angle and decide him worthy for whatever celebrity/college intern/secretary/one night stand that he was heading towards, and the whole time, Pepper would be dying on the inside, because she's too busy imagining what it might be like if for just one night, the girl he was taking out would be her.

Or how she always gets dragged along to his many charity events because  _you're important, Pepper, I'd forget my head if you weren't there to remind me,_ and they would only last thirty minutes actually dealing with the company business before she would be left in the corner of the room while he went to talk to some girl or another, left there like she's something decorative that you draw attention to when you want to impress company, like, look, look what I bought, look what it can do, it can reel off company statistics in thirty seconds, look at her go, and while he's off having the time of his life, she's standing there with her feet aching from the heels and the smile knocked crooked on her face, juggling cell phones and paperwork and drinks, all the while watching him and thinking how this is not how she thought her life would look.

Or that in the morning, she gets to see this girl that he brought home, see her fresh from the shower with her messy hair and half dressed, smile still on her face, and she would have to stand there and be polite, wondering if this would finally be the one that took Tony away from her for good, if maybe this is the girl that sticks.

But those aren't really the worst parts. 

Those are only bad parts.

Really, the worst part is what happens after they leave.  When she's standing in that corner and realizes that tony already left and she would have to take a cab.  When the door slams shut and the voice fades away and there is only Jarvis asking her if she would like him to order her take out while she works.  When she makes breathless introductions to the half naked girl in the hallway because she really just can't deal with it today.  The worst part is that she looks at them, and then they leave, and she's left with only herself, and she knows without a doubt in her mind that there is no way she can measure up, so maybe its better to kill this before it really starts.

 

 

 

"Jesus, Tony."  Normally, Pepper does not yell in front of guests.  Normally, Pepper is aware that people can record everything and cameras are always watching and one slip will mean the end of her.  Normally, she stays calm, the picture of the perfect assistant, because she can not treat Tony the same way she does behind close doors when there were strangers around.  But that was before she walked down into the workshop, the one place she was sure that was only for her and Tony, and finds him with a girl.  (Correction: not girl.  Girls.  Two of them.)  "In the workshop now?"

"Pepper!"  He holds a hand out to her, and there's a small amount of horror growing in her chest as she realizes two things: one, that Tony was still ready to party even though he has an important meeting with Obadiah in three hours, and two, that the girls on the couch were making room for her, because they think she's one of them, that she was just going to sit down and strip and join them in whatever they were doing.  "What are you doing here?"

"It's morning, Tony."  She dumps her paperwork on the table, slams the start button on the coffee maker, an then turns to face him, hands on her hips, present company be damned.  "And they need to leave."

He doesn't make any move to stop her.

That's how she knows that this is just a one night thing, the way that Tony lets her help the girls gather up their shoes and jackets and lead them to the upstairs foyer, promising that JARVIS would alert them when their cab was here, and that Tony would pay the fee for as long as they wanted to drive.  By the time she gets back down there, he's fallen back into himself a little bit, already sitting down at his desk with the cup of coffee at his elbow, pen in his teeth and a furrow between his eyebrows while he looks at the diagrams for the next invention, already turning towards smoothing out the wrinkles.  It's so much like the scene she had been expecting that she half wondered if what happened earlier had been a dream, but then she sees the lipstick stain at his collar and remembers that it wasn't.

"What's wrong with you?"  She slams the folders down beside him, because like always, she cannot hand him things.  They have their routine, and he just ruined it.  "Bringing them down here?"

"It's my house!"  He was joking, still riding the high from last night, but then he swiveled around to face her and held his hands out, placating.  "I know, security risk.  It won't happen again.  They were just old friends, back from MIT days."

 _You were a child at MIT,_ she thought, wishing she would stomp back in just so she could slam the door behind her.   _How'd you know them, the babysitters?_

"You can't bring them down here."  She had thought today was going to be a good day.  There were no charity events, no major deadlines.  It could have been one of their easy days.  "This is-,"

_Is what, Pepper?  Is different?  Is ours?  Crossing a line?  Because it's not.  This is nothing.  This is what it is supposed to look like._

"Is what?"  He's crossing over to annoyed, now.  He's so very rarely annoyed with her that it actually hurts.  "What is wrong with you today?"

He's turned back to his desk, so he couldn't see her face as she storms out, but judging by the extra large helping of Chinese food JARVIS sent her way later that night, the AI definitely did.

 

 

 

_What is wrong with you, what is wrong with you, what is wrong with you._

She plays it over in her head the next few days, dissecting each syllable and every ounce of emphasis he put into the words and she came to one conclusion: he was genuinely confused.

Which meant that he didn't know.  He didn't know that she loved him, that she wanted him, that she wanted to take the place of one of those girls, wanted to  _be_ those girls, even if she only got him for a night.  He wasn't ignoring it to be polite, he was just oblivious.

Which makes it even more pathetic.

 

 

She gets left behind again.

For a moment, she thought that it would be okay.  That she and Tony could take care of their business deal, break down the blockages that was getting in the way of drawing up a contract, and celebrate with a set of drinks that Tony buys her from the bar.  That they could go home, and he would talk her into staying, and they would watch some bad movie that was on tv, and everything would be fine.  But then he saw someone he wanted, a blonde with long legs and a laugh that could be heard from across the room, and Pepper was left at a table by herself, guarding his things and watching him work, already figuring out where to take send them on their first date, because she could already tell that this is one of the ones he cares about.  

Pepper's gotten good at knowing things like that just by the look on Tony's face, and she can't stand that, so she leaves, gathers up all the papers and makes her excuses and grabs her coat from the flustered boy at the coat check, telling him to please inform Mr. Stark that she had went home ahead of him, should he bother to remember that she existed, and then she went off to find Happy.

"Happy."  He's standing in a circle with the other drivers, smoking, even though he promised Tony he had quit. Another night, she would already be planning to tell Tony, but that was before.  "We're leaving."

He panics for a moment, but then he sees its just her and puts his cigarette out on the cement, squashing it with the heel of his shoe.  "Alright."  He shrugs his shoulders.  "Where's Mr. Stark?"

"He won't be joining us."  

"And that's alright with him?"

"Trust me."  She throws herself into the backseat of the car, buckles herself in, and crosses her arms so tightly that she might be cutting off circulation.  "You'll be back before he even notices that I left."

 

 

 

 

She doesn't talk the rest of the way home, which makes it for a very long drive, but by the time her apartment complex comes into view, she is wiping away tears and hoping that she didn't smear her mascara.

"Thank you, Happy."  She rapped on the divide between them and then hopped out, hitching her bag up over her shoulder.  "I'll see you tomorrow."

 _Maybe,_ she adds in her head.   _Maybe you will.  Maybe I'll just quit._

But she does seem him again, much sooner than the next day, because even though she swore she saw him pull away, by the time she's putting the key in the lock he's climbing up the steps, breathing so heavy he might have ran the whole way.  

"She wasn't a red head."  He puts his palm on the door to stop her from shutting it, because she had thought it was safe to start crying and didn't want him to see.  "That girl, from a few nights ago, she was a blonde.  He only said that to get you to pay attention to him."

 _I was already paying attention,_ she thinks to herself.   _Doesn't he know I'm always paying attention?_

Happy's waiting for an answer, but she can't give it to him.  There is no answer for this, for the feeling in her chest and how seeing him with someone else rips her apart, and certainly no answer for how stupid it was for him to even make the comment just to get a rise out of her.  How even more stupid it was that it bothered her.  There are no good answers for anything, anymore, which sucks, because she's so used to being the one who always knows the right thing to say.

(She used to be the girl with all the answers.  Tony took that away from her, turned her into this person that can't even handle standing in the side of the room, which is basically the job of a potted plant.)

She doesn't have an answer, but she needs to say something, so she reaches out to hug him and swipes at the lone tear that she had let fall.  "Thanks, Happy."  

It's all she could think of, and it was no where near enough.

 

**Author's Note:**

> find me on Instagram @olive.writes.fanfic


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